Justice Denied (9 page)

Then, because the house was still quiet—relatively quiet due to Lars’s Olympian snoring—and because I couldn’t think of anything more to do about LaShawn Tompkins right then, I called up LexisNexis one more time and, just for the hell of it, typed in the name Anthony David Cosgrove.

All right. So I complained about computers for years. Resisted using them. Griped about having to use them. But now I’m a believer. Within seconds of typing the name, there it was—a whole list of hits concerning Anthony David Cosgrove. To my surprise one of them was only two months old. It came from an obscure magazine called
Electronics Engineering Journal.
It was a long, amazingly dull article on corruption and payoffs among defense contractors. The reference to Cosgrove came near the end of the article.

That was it. But still, it was intriguing. The missing persons report had said nothing about Cosgrove being involved in any kind of at-work investigation. And DeAnn hadn’t mentioned anything to me about it either, but she had been a little girl at the time. Something could well have been going on at work without her having any knowledge of it. The wife would have known, however, and I was interested to see that she had made no mention of it.

I jotted down Thomas Dortman’s name. If, as he claimed, he had personal knowledge of what was going on at Boeing in the early eighties, maybe he had personal knowledge of Anthony David Cosgrove as well.

The next listing for Anthony Cosgrove predated the previous one by almost twenty years. It turned out to be the 1988 announcement in which the man was declared legally dead. It seems to me that being declared legally dead would be enough to get your name removed from a missing persons list, but bureaucracies really are bureaucracies, and the right hand often has no idea what the left is doing.

I would have plowed on. I was about to put Dortman’s name into my search engine when the phone rang.

“Okay,” Detective Kendall Jackson said. “Thought you’d want to know that you’ve flunked Miss Congeniality one more time. You’re back on everybody’s bad list again.”

“Me?” I asked with feigned innocence. “What have I done this time?”

“Stepped on somebody’s toes hard enough that we’ve been told we’re not to share information about LaShawn Tompkins’s murder with anyone, most especially anyone with the initials J.P. So what did you find out?”

“I found out that the King Street Mission gives me the creeps,” I replied.

“I hear you loud and clear on that one,” Jackson said.

“And I wouldn’t trust Pastor Mark any farther than I can throw him.”

“Ditto on that,” Jackson agreed.

“I learned that King Street Mission will be holding a memorial service for LaShawn on Thursday night, and I know I can’t attend.”

“No problem,” Jackson said. “Hank and I already have that one covered.”

I had saved the best for last. “And I’ve traced Elaine Manning as far as the YWCA on Fifth Avenue, arriving at ten-oh-six on Saturday morning. I have no idea where she went from there.”

“That’s something I didn’t know,” Jackson said. “Thanks for the heads-up. I’ll check it out.”

“So you and I are still good, then?” I asked.

“As far as I know,” he replied. “Your name’s Beau Beaumont, right? Never heard of anyone named J.P.”

Detective Kendall Jackson was indeed my kind of guy.

About then I thought everything was in good shape, but before I could return to LexisNexis, the phone rang. It was the doorman calling to let me know that my daughter and her family were downstairs. Could he send them up?

“Of course,” I said. After that, everything went straight to hell. In a handbasket.

I expected Kyle to be a handful. After all, he was only a month or so old. And Lars? Of course he would need attention. His wife had just died. And Kayla? She’s four. What could you expect, especially considering the fact that my penthouse condo is anything but kid-proof. (Then again, when it comes to four-year-olds, is anything ever really kid-proof?) What I didn’t anticipate was that Kelly would be more of a pain in the neck than all of the rest of them put together.

Because, as I had gathered from our nonphone conversation, she really wasn’t speaking to me. She spoke to Lars. She spoke to Jeremy, who looked as though he would much prefer being anywhere else in the universe to being cooped up in his father-in-law’s domicile. Kelly spoke to Kayla. When she went into the guest room to feed Kyle and put him down for a nap, I went gunning for Jeremy. I found him hiding out in the family room with Kayla, who was watching a cartoon about someone named Elmer or Elmo—something like that. Kayla and Lars were both engrossed in watching the TV. Jeremy was dozing. Like Kelly, he, too, had that dim, chronically sleep-deprived look which, as I remember, is part and parcel of having a newborn in the house. I woke him up.

“What’s going on with Kelly?” I asked.

Jeremy shook his head and shrugged. “Beats me,” he said miserably. “All I know is I can’t do anything right.”

“That makes two of us,” I said.

At which point Kelly suddenly reappeared in the doorway. “Let’s go,” she announced.

Jeremy said, “Where?”

“To the hotel,” Kelly said. “Obviously that’s somebody else’s room! I wouldn’t want to be in the way.”

“No!” Kayla wailed. “I don’t want to go!”

In actual fact, it was someone else’s closet. Mel didn’t use the bedroom at all, but with Mel’s clothing and makeup clearly evident in both the bathroom and the closet, I could see how Kelly might have gotten that mistaken idea into her head.

“I thought we were going to stay for dinner,” Jeremy objected.

“We’ll eat at McDonald’s,” Kelly said firmly. “Kayla will like that better anyway.”

“I don’t wanna go!” Kayla said. “I want to stay here. With Gumpa.”

Lars said, “Is there a problem?”

Dutifully Jeremy began collecting things—the diaper bag, the baby carrier, and all the other little necessaries that go with being parents of young children—while Kelly simply headed for the door with the blanket-swaddled Kyle in her arms. By then Kayla was wailing at the top of her lungs and stamping her feet. “Don’t wanna go. Don’t wanna go.”

At which point the telephone rang again. “Your caterer is here,” the doorman announced. “Should I send her up?”

Why the hell not?
I thought. “By all means,” I said.

Kayla was still screeching as the elevator headed for the lobby. It was enough to make me long for the old days and the relative peace and quiet of the Seattle PD homicide squad—even if Captain Paul Kramer was the guy running the show.

T
he catered dinner was not a huge success. In fact, although the food itself was excellent, the company was lacking. Kelly and Jeremy did not attend. Lars wasn’t hungry. Scott and Cherisse showed up an hour and a half later than expected due to their Seattle-bound aircraft having had some kind of mechanical problem while it was still on the ground at SFO. Their food was cold. Mel didn’t show up for dinner at all. And she didn’t call.

This should probably be filed under the heading of “Just Deserts,” because if my ex-wife Karen were still alive, I’m sure she could recount, chapter and verse, the many times I missed meals—and didn’t call, either. But knowing it was payback time didn’t make me feel any better. About 9:00 p.m., when I came
back from returning Lars to his digs at Queen Anne Gardens, Mel was home. I found her at the dining room table. Still damp from taking a shower and clad only in a robe, she was chowing down on leftovers.

“How’d it go?” she asked.

“Could have been better,” I muttered. “Where’ve you been?”

“Crime scene,” she replied. “Out by Mount Si. We were out in the boonies far enough that we ended up in a telecommunications black hole. Cell phones don’t work there.”

“What kind of crime scene?” I asked.

“Homicide,” she said. “What did you think it would be?”

Barring unusual circumstances, SHIT isn’t often called in on homicide crime scenes. First response usually falls to local agencies and jurisdictions.

“Whose case is it?” I asked. “And how come you took the call?”

“It happened in rural King County,” Mel explained. “But it turns out the victim is one of mine—one of my registered sex offenders, that is. So we’re running a joint investigation. The guy’s name is Kates—Allen Christopher Kates. That’s still tentative, even though it’s based on ID we found on the body. We’ll need dental records to get a positive, and we won’t have those from the Department of Corrections until tomorrow at the earliest.”

The call for dental records implied that the body had been there for a while. I’ve been to grim crime scenes like that. The fact that Mel could come from a sickening homicide investigation with her appetite for dinner still intact said a lot about who she was—and why I liked her.

“Kates lived by himself in a little camper shell out in the
woods, sort of like the guy down in Oregon,” Mel continued. “He wasn’t big on friends and family, since he’d been dead for a month or longer before anyone bothered to report him missing.”

“Meth lab?” I asked.

People who live by themselves in the woods often participate in the manufacturing sector. Mixing up batches of meth is a growth industry in rural areas all over the country.

“Nope,” Mel said. “No sign of meth. He was growing plenty of grass, however.” And she didn’t mean Bermuda.

“What did he die of?” I asked.

“A single bullet wound to the head. It was fired from pointblank range. Blew out most of his skull.”

“Self-inflicted?” I asked.

“Not likely,” she answered, “since no weapon was found at the scene.”

“And how did you get dragged into it?”

“Like I said, he was one of the guys on my list. I happened to be checking on him at the same time someone else was busy finding the body.”

“That makes what, now—three of your guys, as you call them—dead? One in Oregon, one in Bellingham, and now this?”

“More like seven,” Mel said as she stood to clear her plate and carry the remaining containers of roast beef, mashed potatoes, and gravy back to the fridge. “I thought Ross wanted me to verify addresses of living sex offenders. I had no idea so many of them would have croaked. And the dead guys are all over the map—literally. Two now in Washington, one each in Idaho, Oregon, and Montana, and two more in Arizona.”

It didn’t surprise me to think that any given list of ex-cons,
violent sexual predators or otherwise, would have a high mortality rate. They’re not exactly the kind of folks who avoid what insurance actuaries like to call “risky behavior.” Accidental overdoses of illegal drugs routinely take out far more bad guys these days than executioner-administered lethal injections ever will.

“So your guys are dying like flies. What of?”

Mel smiled at my inadvertent rhyme. “Three car accidents,” she said. “The guy on Chuckanut Drive and the two in Arizona. Ricardo Fernando Hernandez and Felix Andrade Moreno were cell mates in Monroe and later roommates down in Phoenix. Their vehicle ended up upside down in an irrigation canal outside Phoenix. Hernandez was behind the wheel and drunk. That one’s been ruled an accident. Idaho and Montana were both overdoses, most likely suicides, although no notes were found.”

“Maybe they couldn’t write,” I suggested.

“And maybe there was too much pressure,” Mel said. “At least that’s how it looks for some of them. Once they’re out of the slammer they’re required to register with local authorities and their information is posted on the Internet. The guy in Pocatello, Frederick Jamison, lost his job and was being evicted once his information became public. Pretty much the same thing happened to Ray Ramirez in Helena, Montana. There was a huge public outcry from the neighbors about him coming back there to live with his parents.”

“Pardon me while I don’t go all warm and fuzzy over a bunch of loser sexual predators,” I told her. “And what’s the matter with you? Sounds like you’re saying ‘evil, nosy neighbors’ and ‘poor, pitiful sexual predators.’”

Mel looked troubled. “I’m not saying anything of the kind, but it does strike me as odd. I’ve only worked my way through a
hundred and fifty names or so, and seven dead strikes me as a pretty high number. These are reasonably young guys, mostly in their thirties and forties. I think something’s amiss here, and I don’t know what. I also think that’s why Ross has me looking into it—because, as you said, they are dying like flies.”

I was starting to feel better by then, lulled by the simple normality of talking shop with Mel, of discussing the nuts and bolts of her several cases. I have no doubt that my visit to the King Street Mission would have benefited from a dose of Mel Soames’s insightful analysis, too, but asking for her help on that one would have meant admitting I was working a case when I was supposedly off work on bereavement leave and looking after Lars. The same went for Anthony David Cosgrove. Since I wasn’t supposed to be working, I didn’t bring that one up, either.

We went from the table to the window seat, where Mel moved a cushion and unearthed one of Kayla’s toys, a red hand puppet that looked a lot like the cartoon character she’d been watching on TV earlier in the afternoon. Obviously Jeremy’s rushed toy-collection mission hadn’t been entirely successful.

“Elmo,” Mel said, slipping the puppet onto her hand.

“I never heard of him,” I told her. “How do you know this guy’s name is Elmo?”

Mel laughed. “I’m a detective, remember?” she said, whacking me playfully on the noggin with Elmo’s semi-hard head. “I get paid for knowing things. Actually, my niece loves anything Elmo. What’s your excuse for not knowing? And where did everybody go? I expected to come home to a houseful of company.”

And so I gave her a blow-by-blow description of my disastrous
“family” afternoon and evening, including the part about Kelly decamping in a huff once she found Mel’s personal items lurking in the guest room closet and bathroom.

“Sounds like she’s suffering from a severe case of separation anxiety,” Mel said. “She’s afraid of losing you to me.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I argued. “Kelly isn’t losing me. I’m not going anywhere.”

“She just had a baby,” Mel pointed out. “I’m guessing her hormones are all out of whack at the moment. You need to be patient.”

“She’s the one who could use some patience,” I grumbled.

Shaking her head, Mel changed the subject. “Did you ever get around to making some kind of arrangements for a post-funeral reception for Lars?” she asked.

I had been playing social director all afternoon, but this one responsibility had somehow fallen off the radar. “Damn!” I said.

“I take that to mean no?” Mel asked.

I nodded. She immediately reached for her cell phone. “I’ll call Rita, then,” she said. “I’m sure she’ll do it.”

“Who’s Rita?” I asked.

“Rita Davenport. She runs the same catering company that served dinner tonight. She and I are both board members of SASAC. That’s how I knew to call her. Why don’t you check with the manager on party room availability. I’ll see what I can do about rounding up some food.”

Luckily, the party room was open for early Thursday afternoon. While I reserved it via the landline, Mel made arrangements for Magical Meals to provide food and beverages. In less time than I would have thought possible, Beverly Jenssen’s post-funeral reception was a done deal.

“You do good work,” I told Mel when she put the phone back down.

“Thank you,” she said, turning to give me a long, inviting kiss. “I’m actually a multitalented girl.”

And that was absolutely true.

I awakened the next morning to the smell of brewing coffee and to Mel’s voice on the telephone telling Harry I. Ball in no uncertain terms that Allen Kates or no Allen Kates, Mel was taking the day off.

“The man’s already been dead for more than a month,” she said. “If King County comes up with anything today, I’m sure they’ll be more than happy to bring me up to speed tomorrow.”

Harry Ignatius Ball was fearless, except when it comes to dealing with irate women. He’s liable to say something politically incorrect in the process, but he always capitulates. This was no exception. Harry buckled.

“Now that I’m not going in,” Mel said, handing me my coffee, “do we have a schedule?”

We didn’t, but Mel managed to organize one in short order. Scott and Cherisse were dispatched to Queen Anne Gardens to collect Lars and bring him to the Shanty on lower Queen Anne for a family breakfast. Despite the risk of occasionally running into Maxwell Cole, I’ve come to appreciate the Shanty in the past few months. It’s old enough for me to feel comfortable there, and I know Lars likes it, too. It had the added advantage of being within easy walking distance of the kids’ hotel.

I expected breakfast to be another disaster, but it wasn’t. Mel disarmed Kelly’s emotional Molotov cocktail by charming Kayla with a pocketful of stickers and by holding Kyle and cooing over
him in a way that would have dumbfounded her fellow SHIT officers, Harry I. Ball included. And while Mel and I looked after the kids, Lars had everyone else’s undivided attention as he passed around Beverly Piedmont Jenssen’s treasured scrapbooks.

On that particular day, that collection of yellowed newspaper clippings served as my grandmother’s parting gift to me—and an incredible blessing. It amounted to pretty much a hard-copy LexisNexis report on the life and times of J. P. Beaumont, but this one had been done the old-fashioned way, with scissors and Elmer’s glue.

Back in the days when names meant business for local community newspapers, Beverly had culled all kinds of bits and pieces of my life from the pages of the now-defunct
Ballard Dispatch.
There were items about Cub Scout activities and high school athletic events, all of them carefully clipped and dated. I don’t think either of the kids had ever seen Karen’s engagement photo or our wedding announcement. (Our divorce announcement was there, too, but that was much later. Beverly wasn’t one for editing out bad news.)

Later on, the stories shifted away from the
Dispatch
and onto the pages of the
Seattle Times
and the
P-I,
as my career as first a Seattle PD beat cop and later as a detective took off and occasionally became newsworthy. There were secrets lurking among my grandmother’s treasures that neither of my children had ever known or suspected about their father. It turned out Beverly had managed to glean things about Kelly and Scott as well—their published birth announcements, for example. Beverly had continued keeping her loving long-distance vigil even after I had reconciled with her and my grandfather.

And at the very last, tucked into the first empty page in the
most recent notebook, was the cardboard-framed hospital photo of Kyle. I’m sure Lars put it there for the simple reason that he needed to put it away. I don’t know if his choice of the notebook was deliberate or accidental, but I gave him credit for a stroke of pure genius when I saw the tearfully grateful look Kelly shot in my direction when she found it. The look was utterly priceless—and due entirely to Mel’s efforts rather than my own.

By the time we left the restaurant it was almost time to go to the funeral home.

I don’t like funerals, probably because I’ve been to far too many of them in my time. And I expected this one to be bad news. I realized it was going to be different, however, as soon as we walked into the chapel, where an invisible organ was playing “Love Is Lovelier the Second Time Around.” The back two rows were packed with people—mostly women and one lone man—from Queen Anne Gardens. Also near the back was the contingent from SHIT—Harry and the two other guys from Squad B, Brad Norton and Aaron Oliver. Close to the front were my friends Ron and Amy Peters, along with their three kids. Ralph and Mary Ames were also in attendance.

The whole front of the chapel was arrayed with floral arrangements. Maybe I had overdone it a little, but not that much. As Beverly had specified, there were two separate boxes of cremains on the altar. Between them stood a color photo of a beaming Beverly Piedmont Jenssen, dressed, for once in her life, in sparkling formal attire.

The photo had been one of those shipboard rites of passage taken prior to the formal-night dinner on the
Starfire Breeze
during their honeymoon cruise to Alaska. Seeing Beverly’s very sophisticated upswept hairdo, I remembered the firefight that had
resulted when Lars had made the tactical blunder of comparing Beverly’s hairdo to the fender on a ’57 Cadillac. If you studied the photo closely, you could see the edge of Lars’s glasses where someone, using one of those computerized photo-editing programs, had excised him from the formal pose.

Lars leaned over me. “
Ja,
sure,” he said. “Yust look at all the flowers. Who do you t’ink sent them?”